1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to communications, particularly to a collaboration system with multiple terminals.
2. Description of Related Art
Collaboration refers to processes wherein people work together to develop an idea, create a design, or generally achieve a shared goal. In a local environment, people collaborate in the confines of a cubicle, an office or a conference room, using tools such as a whiteboard, flip-charts, or a projector to share data information while exchanging ideas in a face-to-face fashion.
In the new economy of multi-national corporations, mobile work forces, home offices, outsourcing and globalization, remote collaboration becomes increasingly critical to the vitality of businesses.
Remote collaboration naturally begins with a telephone call. Oftentimes during the telephone conversation, a participant wants to send a document to others so they can continue their conversation over the document. In one example, a product manager wants to present a product proposal to his customer. In another example, a project manager wants to share an up-to-date schedule spreadsheet with her product development manager. In one example, a fashion designer wants to share a preliminary drawing of the summer fashion line with his advisor. In a further example, two software engineers want to discuss a piece of programming code.
There are many existing tools for collaboration, ranging from telephone, email, instant messaging, to elaborated integrated solutions such as the Microsoft Netmeeting, Skype, or Yahoo Messenger.
In one example, a manager uses her desktop telephone to call a human resource representative to discuss salary merit increases for the upcoming fiscal year. During the discussion, the human resource representative wants to share a document having a competitive salary analysis with the manager. The human resource representative sends the document as an email attachment. They have to wait until the manager receives the email before they can discuss the details of the document.
In another example, a hardware designer uses NetMeeting to discuss a prototype schematic with his manager. He calls the manager over the phone, to ask her to run the NetMeeting application on her personal computer, and log on to the corporate network. In the mean time, the hardware engineer will have to wait until his manager is ready.
In one embodiment, Jack, a salesperson, visits a customer. Jack calls a product manager in the corporate office about closing a deal with the customer. During discussion, the product manager wants to send Jack an updated price list through Yahoo Instant Messaging (IM) service. Jack has to log on to Yahoo IM service and start an instant messaging session with the product manager.
These tools, despite their respective functionalities, do not address the natural usage of collaboration which begins with a telephone call, and proceeds with other collaboration functions such as sharing a document.
Therefore, there is a need for a system to provide functionalities conforming to the natural progression of collaboration.